In a recent Fast Company profile of Spotify, CEO Daniel Ek and other executives spoke about the long-term vision for the company, which very much involves a massive global expansion into countries like China and India, which have the potential to become some of the world's biggest markets for streaming music. This new funding will help Spotify achieve that worldwide expansion, according to the Wall Street Journal.

In 2012, Spotify, which is not yet profitable, doubled the revenue it generated from paid monthly subscriptions to $585 million, although its hefty losses—$77 million in the same year—have garnered the company a fair amount of media coverage. Spotify says it has paid more than $500 million to rights holders to date.